Nokia

The first two Windows Phone devices Nokia announced late last year, the Lumia 710 and 800, looked like decent but unexciting phones. The phones were also missing a couple of feature checkboxes including a front-facing camera, NFC and LTE. The first 2012 Lumia model is the 900. How does it fare spec checkbox-wise?

But, I can’t see I see any “mind control” involved after watching the video demo. All the navigation is done through hand motion. The mind control part is supposed to be “thinking in advance” of the course. But, that is not something readily apparent just by watching a video.

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2010 01 18

I’ve noticed small quirky annoying problems with the Nokia N96 since I updated its firmware around May (if memory serves me correctly). The N96 couldn’t “remember” my voice mail number (123) after repeatedly entering it and seeing a message saying it was stored. Camera would not attach GPS geotags to photos even though I repeatedly set it to on in the camera app’s settings. The N96 also seemed to lose its Bluetooth connection to devices that had worked spectacularly well with it for months.

On a whim I checked to see if a new firmware release was available for it today and installed version 30.033 dated June 18, 2009. So far it looks like the voicemail number setting is sticking. I thought the camera’s GPS setting was too. But, a quick just a moment ago showed it had reverted back to off in the past hour. I didn’t notice any Bluetooth drop to a BT car speaker. But, that problem only showed up a couple of times a week (not daily).

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2009 07 19

I spoke with Nokia’s Ira Frimere (Portfolio Manager for North America) and Joseph Gallo (Communications Specialist) about Nokia smartphones (what else?) in this podcast. ZDNet/NokiaExpert.com’s Matt Miller was scheduled to join us but was unable to because of technical issues.

However, the Nokia USA site says it is only available for pre-order and not actually shipping. Since it does not appear to have a US Carrier associated with it, it currently only available at its full $529 price.

The E75 is based on Symbian S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. Its slide-out keyboard looks like a good one. It also includes a 3.2 megapixel camera (with zoom and flash) as well as Assisted-GPS (A-GPS). It has Bluetooth and WiFi (802.11b/g) and provides the ability to serve as a wireless data modem to a tethered device (Nokia PC Internet Access).

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2009 04 02

Interesting video from Nokia giving potential smartphone app developers a sub-4-minute video tutorial on how the Ovi Store app submission process works. Registering as a publisher is free right now. More information can be found at…

Nokia is using the same 70/30 (developer/Nokia) split that Apple user has with their developers. Nokia will not support subscription type apps. But, they do permit both free and paid app types (naturally). I found it interesting that they allow a large number of app and content types including Flash Lite, Java, Symbian S60, WRT widgets as well as themes and wallpapers.

The E71 will be available for $99.99 if you agree to a two year AT&T contract and send in the rebate form. The E71 looks like it has an excellent QWERTY thumb keyboard and should be just the thing for heavy email, texting, and Twitter users.

Matt and I focused our discussion on Nokia S60 smartphones in this 35 minute podcast #20.

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